Facebook to open new office in India

Seeking a better foothold in the world’s second most populated country, Facebook announced Sunday night that it plans to open an office in Hyderabad, the capital of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

The social networking giant, headquartered in Palo Alto, made the announcement early Monday in India, where it has more than 8 million members, Facebook’s Don Faul wrote in the company’s blog.

Facebook on Friday made official plans to open an office in Austin, Texas, and plan to hire employees to fill online sales and operations posts for both offices.

“Both of these offices will allow us to better serve the more than 400 million of you now using Facebook worldwide, as well as our growing number of advertisers and developers,” wrote Faul, a director of global online operations.

“By having multiple support centers in a variety of time zones, we can provide better round-the-clock, multi-lingual support,” he said. “The new offices come at a significant time in our international growth. Seventy percent of the people using Facebook are outside the U.S. and are accessing the service from more than 70 languages,” he said.